Question
Asking questions
In practice it is a rare day when you are not faced with a need to know some new information about the prognosis, treatment or management of a condition. Turning these clinical problems into a well-built ( answerable) clinical question is a key skill of evidence-based practice.
A prudent question is one half of wisdom
Francis Bacon (1561 -1626)
There are essentially two types of question:
Background questions
These ask for general knowledge about a disorder and have two main components.
- A question root (who, what, how, when or why)
- A disorder or specific aspect of a disorder (e.g. What causes dental caries? or What are the complications of root canal treatment?)
Foreground questions
These ask for specific knowledge about how to manage patients with a disorder and a good or well-constructed foreground question usually has four main elements:
- P – The type of patient or the problem of interest
- I – The main intervention or exposure E; this is commonly a treatment but it could be a diagnostic test, some prognostic factor etc.
- C – The comparison intervention/s when relevant
- O – The clinical outcome of interest.
- Commonly referred to as PICO or PECO format.
- e.g. In patients with tooth discolouration would home bleaching compared to placebo lead to whiter teeth?
Resources
- Focusing Clinical Questions – from Centre for Evidence-based Medicine UK.
- Developing answerable clinical questions -Terry Shayneyfelt ( YouTube)